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The Libraries of Central Michigan University: Over a Century of Service

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From its founding, Central Michigan University has recognized the
need for a library. Faculty and administration realized the need for a
resource center where students could gather information regarding a
topic. Faculty and administration also realized that students often
needed a quiet place to study. Finally the administration and faculty,
sometimes grudgingly, acknowledged that the library also served as a
congenial place to meet new friends or renew old acquaintances. To
create a place to seek information, to establish quiet study space, and
for its ability to create a community among students, a library was
critical to the university

Old Main, summer 1906

In 1893, when the university first occupied a building on what is today the CMU campus, until 1925 the
library was located in "Old Main." Old Main was the first building
constructed on campus. Over the years Old Main was expanded and
renovated many times, with the library usually being located in the
building's basement. Despite these expansions, the library's collection
consistently grew faster than the space available in Old Main. Years of
discussion about "the library problem" had led the university to
consider seriously building a separate library building. By 1925 plans
were well advanced and an architectural rendering of what the new
building might look like had been commissioned.

Sketch of proposed library building, 1925

Discussion about a new library, however, took on a sudden
urgency on December 7, 1925, when Old Main burned to the ground. The
fire destroyed both the building and the library's collection. The only
library books left on campus were those that had been checked out by
students or faculty in the days prior to the fire.

Apparently the disastrous fire led the administration to
concentrate all available funds on constructing Old Main's replacement,
Warriner Hall (originally named the "Administration Building"). Warriner
Hall's east wing was given over the library. The two story reading room
could accommodate 250 students, almost half of the 600 students
enrolled in 1933, and 10,000 volumes. An adjoining room housed
additional books. Considered a showcase when it opened the new library
was used for both academic and social purposes. In the fall of 1933, for
example, a faculty reception for students, featuring refreshments and a
dance band, was held in the library reading room.

Library reading room, Warriner Hall, ca. 1930

Despite the pride of the campus community in the new library,
as early as 1933, "the librarian" was expressing concern regarding the
lack of space for the books. When the Warriner library had opened in
1928 it counted 18,000 volumes. By 1933 the printed collection had grown
to 30,000 items. The college was becoming too large and diverse to
house both the library and administrative activities under one roof. The
need for more study space and larger stack areas to house books and
other material continued. At the end of World War II, in 1945, when a
grateful congress voted extraordinarily liberal educational benefits to
the almost 11,000,000 veterans of the war, CMU's student population
soared and pressure on the library to house sufficient material and
enough chairs for students became overwhelming.

By the fall of 1952 the 2,100 students enrolled on campus
complained loudly about the shortcomings of the "echo chamber," as they
had dubbed the Warriner Library. It's remaining 200 student seats, new
book stacks had replaced the other fifty chairs that had been in the
library when it had opened, was woefully inadequate. At the same time
university officials had begun negotiations with Dr. Norman Clarke Sr.
regarding the donation of this considerable collection of rare books. As
part of the negotiations Dr. Clarke asked for the creation of a second,
"special" library on campus that would have a narrow focus and a
significant collection of rare books. In the early 1950's plans were
again drawn up for a separate library building to house both the general
library and potentially a second, special library to be founded by a
gift from Dr. Clarke . The "new" libraries building, today's Ronan Hall,
opened to students in February 1956. It housed both the University
Library and the Clarke Historical Library under one roof.

Old library (now Ronan Hall) under construction

The million dollar, library of 1956 encompassed about 60,000
square feet of space. It vastly increased available seating, offering
750 study seats. The now 90,000 volume book collection fit comfortably
into the building with space to spare for several amenities. The library
offered seminar rooms, sound-proofed, "record" listening rooms, a
student lounge, and the latest in technology, publicly available manual
typewriters for student use. Although the building seemed to solve the
need for a new library, within a decade the building would prove too
small.

Student typewriter stations in Ronan, ca. 1962.

The increase in the number of students, which had begun in
1945, continued throughout the next several decades. By the mid-1960s
the once seemingly spacious 750 student seats available in the library
had grown as inadequate to the now 8,200 students as Warriner's "echo
chamber" had been in the early 1950s. Indeed in the fall of 1965 there
were more freshman enrolled than the total number of students in 1952.
The over 170,000 items housed in the library were once again beginning
to crowd out other functions. To meet the needs of the increased number
of students and the ever expanding collection of material, once again
plans were drawn up for a new library.

That new building, the current Park Library, was opened to
students in 1969. The 173,500 square foot structure was about three
times as large as the former library and cost $4.2 million to erect. It
featured 2,285 seats for study, and an extensive quantity of marble
brought from Indiana.

Park Library, ca 1990

In some ways the "new" library was tied to its predecessors
by a series of unbroken links. The manual typewriters first installed in
Ronan were brought into the Park Library. Similarly the emphasis on
physical holdings that began with the earliest library on campus
continued. The number of books in the library was taken to be a good
measure of the overall importance of the collection. Although on the
surface little had changed, just below the surface a revolution was
beginning that would utterly change the way the libraries and students
did business.

That revolution was based on technology. Photocopying
technology was among the first installed in the Library. Although a
photocopier had been placed in the library in the early 1960s, it was
used primarily by staff rather than students. Slowly additional copiers
were brought into the library. In 1970 self-serve, coin-activated
photocopiers first became available for student use. Clearly delineated
photocopy machines designed exclusively for students were not introduced
until 1977. By 1982-83, students, who only twenty years early had hand
written notes for everything they needed, made an astounding one million
pages of photocopy. Photocopying technology had completely changed how
students "take notes."

If photocopies revolutionized the note taking process in the
library, electronic access to information represented and even greater
change. Students and faculty were first introduced to the possibilities
of on-line searching in 1977, when the library gained access to a number
of computerized databases. Initially, however, access to such
sophisticated tools was very limited. Library staff, rather than library
users, conducted the searches and according to a contemporary document,
"the requestor should prepare a detailed statement, describing the
topic to be searched." The requestor was also expected to pay for this
expensive new searching technology; the rate being $10 per search plus
$3 for each fifty citations, which were printed and given to the
researcher. Given the difficulty of using the databases and the cost to
the patron, use remained low. As late as 1983-84 less than two hundred
such searches were performed per year. The possibility that the access
to databases would eventually be unmediated and without charge seemed
remote.

Student using CENTRA, ca.1995

In approximately 1984 the library purchased its first
microcomputer, a Radio Shack TRS 80 model II. In 1990 the Libraries
implemented what was, from the user's viewpoint, one of the most obvious
and significant technological changes, a computerized, on-line catalog.
Replacing the traditional book catalog that used three inch by five
inch paper cards to record information about books, CENTRA originally
represented 1.7 million records of various types, or four gigabytes of
information, that was accessible through approximately fifty terminals
in the library. CENTRA, computerized databases, and an increasing body
of resource material available on-line, has radically transformed how
students learn about material and retrieve it for their use.

While these changes could not have been foreseen thirty
years ago, even in the 1960s administrators realized that the Park
Library was a work in progress, not a structure to serve the ages. It
would someday need to be enlarged. In the Libraries Annual Report of
1965-1966, Orville Eaton, then planning the Park Library, noted that, "I
am convinced that we shall be praised a generation from now for
planning a building that can be expanded. It is a certainty that the new
library will have to be expanded." In the early 1990s Eaton's words
became a reality. Planning began to enlarge significantly the Park
Library, as well as to renovate the existing structure to meet
technological and other demands undreamed of in the 1960s. These plans
serve as the basis for the addition to and renovation of the Park
Library.

Clarke Historical Library | Mount Pleasant, MI 48859 |
clarke@cmich.edu | Phone: (989) 774-3352 | Fax: (989) 774-2160
If you need accommodations due to a disability while using the Library facilities,
please contact the Reference Desk, either in person or via email.
Please be prepared to state what type of accommodation you require, i.e.
reaching a book, stack retrieval, use of adaptive equipment, or other requests.